


That Old Killing Floor

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Ghoul, Rough Sex, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-19 10:26:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8201999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: He's known her for a long time, longer than he's known most, just not as well as he'd wanted.





	1. Chapter 1

He knew her when she was Mrs. Nate Dower and not The Vault Dweller.

Nora Dower - a ring of simple woven silver on her finger, cupping a small bump under the red dress she’d worn. But she didn't remember him. And why would she? Would be hard to remember his face from just one night, so long ago, even by her estimate. Even if all his good looks hadn’t been melted away by radiation, she still wouldn’t have recognized him.

He’d been just another Veteran that Nate had introduced her to - just another shaved head and square jaw lathered up in a tux with whom she shook hands with, smiling her expected greetings and thanks to. But he couldn't forget her. It was hard to forget the wife of your comrade, whose dirty picture you stole to spill yourself over while enemy fire kept you up at night. Whose pale curvature was the base of his fear-induced dreams when he was certain he wasn't going to see the morning sun. He was suppose to be dreaming about his own wife then, but Nora haunted him like a perverse stained secret. Edward can still remember beating himself off with the sweaty vigor of someone moments away from death, coated in the glow of a broken-glass lantern, tucked away in a corner of the trenches while his fellow brothers in combat took their own means of pleasure and despair as they could.

She was even more beautiful with her clothes on, he found, upon seeing her in the flesh over two hundred years later.

That night, two centuries ago, with the Generals decked out in black; their pins and his comrades with their dressed up wives - with his own wife by his side, her arm around his waist, he could still recall how he wished to trade places with Nate. As rotten as that made him feel he wished it to this day. Nora had a hold on him, and it wasn’t even fully justified.

During those three months overseas he pretended he was going back home to her. That she'd greet him in that open, silk robe like in the photograph...hair down, in light waves, lips crimson and legs pulled up teasingly.

Maybe if his wife had snuck a little token of herself in his letters he wouldn't have found himself so desperate for another woman - but it was pointless putting any blame on her. They had never had as much passion between them as the kind Nate had described to him - the kind he had with Nora.

Besides, any photo his wife would have slipped him would have gotten stolen, just like he stole Nates…

The first time he saw her, post war, he was halfway out the reeking walls of Bunker Hill. He spotted her just moments after being swindled by a ratty looking kid. 

Nora was just as beautiful as he remembered, even with weeks of old dirt under her fingernails and a new terrified crease under her eyes. Those damn eyes. They were still lined with coal even in this hellhole. Her lips were still cherry red and that wedding ring was still on her finger. It took him a few seconds to still himself before he realized, with a rare sense of shame, she didn’t recognize him. 

Formidable, he would think later on, while on the sofa, as she spoke to Jack Cabot about aliens and old relics. Her face never betrayed if she thought Jack was insane, or what she thought which way about the gig. The strange gun tucked away on her hip told him she might have been as much a believer as Jack himself. She did much more than agree to help them in the end.

“So what do you reckon I’ll be expecting?” she asked him before heading out after Emogene.

“Same as all the other times she’s run off,” he found himself saying without even looking up from the Assault Rifle on his lap, “Always went for the smooth, charming types - doubt you’ll have much of a fight with this one.” If he looked at her anymore than he needed she might just bring back too many old memories. It was enough that he couldn’t stop remembering that night in the barracks when he first stroked himself off in the dark, her faded picture illuminated only by his flip lighter. That night he realized, with a pang, that he could die any moment and there was little time for regrets or second thoughts. Any pleasure after that he could sneak in, he took readily. 

“And if she doesn’t want to come home willingly?” she asked, lingering, hip pressing into the side of the sofa closest to him. 

Edward found himself sighing, looking up at her with half a sneer and a rumble that seemed to make her eyes dance even though that wasn't right. Couldn't be. 

“You’re formidable enough, figure it out. It’s what you’re being paid for.”

“Alright,” she stressed, half-laughing, “Was just hoping for some leverage of some kind. I’ll get her back - if anything just for Wilhelmina. Mothers shouldn’t have to worry about where their child is...or if they’re alive.”

Edward peered at her, maybe hoping to look through her. She gave herself away too easily. He had forgotten that she and Nate had a baby, it’d just been a bump then...maybe not even that. His old memory of her in that floor-length dress didn’t give him any clues to if she’d been knocked up then. 

The way she carried herself. The width of her hips and the fuller chest than before - the offhanded remarks and deep concern shown suddenly for this mission in particular. She was a mother after all...couldn’t have been one for long, though, which meant she lost Nate and her son somehow. Could have been before the bombs or after.

And he thought it’d been hard losing his wife. At least they never had kids of their own.

“No,” he found himself saying, watching her look at him with soft eyes and a light, puffy frown, “Parents shouldn’t have to worry like that.”

“But so often do, right?” she smiled a sad smile.

“Too often.”

Nora stayed that night under the insistence of Wilhelmina. He saw her before he was sent out to Parson’s, with a group of guards and a pack full of 5.56 rounds - enough to last him months on the road, but not nearly enough for the serum-hopped freaks that swarmed the asylum. He only lingered long enough to hear her promise Wilhelmina she’d bring Emogene back, but it wasn’t the last he saw of her before heading out.

He was stopped by a careful hand on his wrist just on the outskirts of the estate. His men stopped up ahead, turning back with a question before he nodded them off down the road, lit up by the tattered strings of old Christmas lights. 

“I just wanted to say, be careful.”

Edward chewed on the tip of his tongue, refusing to say much else but his thanks and yet her fingers curled and his throat seized, nearly making him choke. Nora smiled, wide and sweet.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Deegan, but I feel like I’ve known you forever. You’re pre-war aren’t you?” Her lips quivered, “Maybe I have known you forever. It’s a small world after all. Nate used to say that - you knew Nate didn’t you?” Her eyes flickered, knowing and her fingers tightened, firm and lingering. She held onto him like a drowner would a thrown life preserver and he couldn’t help but let her press herself closer. Old flowers invaded his senses - dirt, sweat and floral notes and something sweet enough he felt his stomach ached with hunger. Like apple pie.

“I knew him,” he said without thinking. How could anyone lie to that face - those lips and eyes, that body...that arduous spirit. Edward wanted to bury his fingers into the greasy hair at the nape of her neck and kiss her like Nate no doubt did...no, better. He wanted to kiss her like he did his wife on their honeymoon. Back when life had been innocent and he thought himself in love.

Nora’s smile twitched, eyes going glassy and she swallowed before he heard her delicate reply, “I knew it. I remember you...at the Veteran’s ball. You were there, with your wife. April...or May - a summer month…”

“June,” he corrected her, not remembering his wife’s face any longer but at least he could remember her name. But he didn’t forget Nora’s face...and what did that say about him?

“June, that’s right. You were in Nate’s platoon. You were very handsome that night,” she stopped then, inhaled deeply, swallowing down the memories and the tears and gave his wrist a firm squeeze. “Be safe, please.”

“I can’t say I’ll promise. But the world hasn’t done me in yet. You be careful too, Mrs. Dower.”

“Just Nora now…”

They parted as old friends, even if they’d never been friends, to begin with. But finding someone in this world that she could lean on probably made him more important to her than most, and he wouldn’t deny that the idea of her cherishing him was a rare thing he didn’t want to squander. It had the added side effect of making him feel invincible.

It was only when he had buckshot in his chest and more than a few .44 rounds lodged in his gut that he wished he could have promised her he’d be safe, promised her he’d come back. Edward tried to recall his long dead wife, June, but she was an older memory than Nora. Older than she had any right to be. He should have died long ago. Died with his wife. They all should have died. None of them should have kept on living so long, but he’d be dead soon anyway so why waste his dimming mind on such pointless thoughts?

Worse had befallen him, before the war and after, but he was trapped, bleeding out and the radio was dead in his hand - his other hand tried to staunch the bleeding as it leaked out between his fingers but to little avail. There was no outliving this one, and somehow that wasn’t as calming at he had figured it’d be. 

A distant gunshot woke him up out of what should have been his last sleep. An explosion got the dregs of his adrenaline pumping, fresh blood leaking and then through the haze of ancient dust and debris, came Nora and Jack.

“Edward! Are you alright?”

“Can you get up?”

“Did they make it to the basement?”

He almost laughed, but the pain was too much and though it hurt even more to admit it - he was too weak to laugh.

“They got me a few times, Jack, but I took out as many as I could. Got several, the rest just left me alone. Elevator’s busted.”

“Can you get up?” he repeated.

“No, Jack,” he breathed, catching Nora looking at him with a sweaty, terrified expression; eyes on his stomach where the blood leaked, “I’m hurt pretty bad.”

“Are you sure, Edward? We could really use you.”

“...yeah,” this time he managed a bitter laugh, “I’m sure.”

He wouldn’t last much longer, but he managed to feel Nora’s fingers on his neck, warm and cool all at once before a sting pierced the thick, leathery flesh of his stomach. A stimpack. Of all the good it would do, but Edward sighed and let her peel his hand off his stomach. He let her gently lift his jacket out of his belts, watching her unbutton and open the blood-soaked material. His undershirt was stained black with blood, but he only watched her pale fingers go red as she lifted up the material, injecting another stim under his ribs.

“I’ll be back,” she whispered, “just hold on a little longer. This will stop the bleeding.” She hesitated before rising, eyes hot on his stomach, “I’ll be back. Promise me you’ll wait for me.”

This time, he promised, nodding her off after Jack, pulling in a few steady breaths as he readied himself for a long wait. He’d been through worse...before the war and after. He could live a little longer. For the right reasons of course.

Edward expected to wake up to Jack pulling bullets and buck out of his torso, but instead he found himself laid up in bed - the same ceiling fan spinning lazily above him that had been there for the past two-hundred years. Clean white bandages, dotted with pink covered him from shoulder to abdomen. A sheet hung low on his hips and when he leaned up, his arms were strapped to the bed frame. Old war flashbacks threatened to resurface - old and stained and then he swallowed them down and yanked on the restraints with a growl. They made a weak sound of resistance and he tensed, pulled and -

“Stop that.”

There she was, in the doorway, glowing. She was clean and beautiful - hair wet and skin looking moist under an old dress of Emogene’s - the cinched black one she used to wear at all the aristocratic socials. It looks shorter on Nora...

“I spent most of my morning getting you comfortable, wouldn’t want that to go to waste just because you veterans can’t sit still.”

“Had some experience with this I take it?” he managed, voice even raspier than what he was used too. His stomach protested with each movement, but he tugged at the straps regardless. The pain he could deal with. Restraints he wasn’t too sure.

“I mean it,” she warned, lips pursed. Edward watched her sit down on the edge of the bed beside him, looking down his body like he had fine print etched down his chest. 

Edward swallowed, ignoring the pain in his stomach when the scrutinizing look turned radiation hot. His lower gut pulled sharply in an old, primal feeling; arousal, maybe. Like a hawk surveying some prey, he thought, almost losing himself in the barracks again, jerking himself off in his fist to filthy depraved ideas of what he’d do to Nate’s wife if he ever got ahold of her.

Nora’s lips quirked up, “Before I got my degree I did some volunteer nursing in college. That’s how I met Nate actually,” she whispered, her fingers dragging softly over the bandages on his chest. “Had him restrained for a week after his first tour. There was no other way to keep him from tearing his stitches.”

“Real men have a hard time staying still when there're wars to win you know.”

“Yes, I know. I’m pretty sure we used a dozen stims on him before tying him up like this - it got a laugh out of the other girls...guess it got me a husband.”

Just that image alone was enough to make the following two days in bed hell enough to rival the end of the world. He was stuck in a stark white room for most of the time, picturing Nora in a candy striper outfit, straddling poor Nate on his sick bed. Then gradually he imagined her tearing the sheets off his hips, sinking slowly over him in that same robe she’d worn in her picture...

When she let him move around again, he went out searching for her, figured she was lingering for some reason but Jack told him she’d gone and with no word which way or if she was coming back or not. It was business as usual after that then, and he accepted that as easily as he could. Until not more than a week later she came back, her voice rushed over the intercom.

“Hold tight,” he told her, unlocking the door for her to come barreling in, blood stains all down her front, a nice long open tear from collar to navel, exposing much of what laid hidden beneath. It was nothing he hadn’t seen in the picture he stole from her husband two-hundred years ago, but it didn’t take him but a second to help her secure the edges together, just before Jack turned the corner at the racket.

“Hounds,” she gasped, “Mutant hounds.”

Jack shook his head, complaining about the state of the world and the bots that needed diagnostics - about how she should have been here yesterday and that he, Edward, needed to find her a new set of clothes in the laundry room.

“You still bleeding?” he asked her before he began leading her down the stairs. Her fingers were white around the halves of her shirt, still scared - still shocked.

“No, it’s just a surface wound...just got too close for comfort is all. Closer than I would have wanted. After all my time here I’ve never been so close to…”

“Dying,” Edward finished, looking through a freshly folded pile of Emogene’s dresses, finding nothing but a sheer cotton shirt and some summer shorts. “Slim pickings.”

“It’s fine. Would you hand me that towel?”

He tossed her the fluffy hand towel, turned back when she ran the utility sink. It was easier to pretend he was looking for something else for her to put on, but in all reality, his heart was running hard thinking about her long legs in those shorts he’d placed on the dryer. 

She hissed behind him and when he turned around he stumbled, grabbing the edge of the shelves to stop his knees from buckling. Nora’s bare breasts rested under the fluorescent lights, coated in dirt and old blood. She brushed away the grime with the wet towelette, oblivious to him standing there; frozen and staring.

“Now that I’m looking at it, a stimpak might be necessary,” she told him, cleaning a soft, firm breast carefully. What did she expect out of him in a situation like this? In the past two weeks, she’d been gone he must have thought about her a thousand times, most of those times involving something like this and now she was leaning against the dryer, bare from the waist up, stroking herself clean.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he rasped dangerously.

Her kohl-lined eyes shot up to his, wide and questioning. Then her lips parted, “I thought…” and then she went silent, looking ashamed. Her eyes darted around the room, before falling to the side, “I didn’t think it’d bother you - I didn't think someone in your condition would be-”

“Fucking able? Interested?” he cut her off, just as frustrated as he was aroused by the way her breasts swayed as she stood up tall, holding her ground again his language.

“I’m sorry,” she started, but he was quick to shake his head at her apology. Only one that needed to sprout those might have been him. Wasn’t her fault some bigot told her lies.

“Just...don’t worry about it,” he grumbled, turning to a bin of stale medical supplies on the adjacent shelf, “Here, might be a weak one. Jack doesn’t make them very often.”

“I appreciate it,” she sang, but her tone was awkward and thin, nothing like the pep of adrenaline and endorphins from before. Edward gave her another quick look - just a run down as she slid the stim under her collar bone, hissing quietly then flushing brightly. Beautiful, as she’d always been. He realized while she handed him her bloody torn clothes while his back was turned, that she was even more so now. The war had been kind to her at least appearance wise, not like it did the rest of ‘em.

“I’m decent,” she whispered, “Look...Deegan…”

Edward shifted in the tight space, looking down at her worrying expression. The spotless fabric clinging to her hips and breasts was glaring against the dirty length of her arms and legs.

“...if I have been,” another pause, “if I have given you a certain impression of being at all disgusted by you, then I’m sorry. For me to assume something based on a flippant comment I heard, well, that was unfair of me.”

“Unfair?” he found himself smirking bitterly, unable to help himself, “it’s me that’s been unfair. Your husband, Nate, he would’ve shot me for snapping at his bleeding wife for something like that.”

“Well, he’s not here...is he?” There was something insinuating in that, but by the time he could think about the implications of it, she was already shaking her head; bloody hair slapping around her shoulders, “Doesn’t matter. Please, accept my apology so I don’t feel so terrible.”

“Fine,” he rasped, nodding his chin, “You’re forgiven.”

Nora wiped at a moist bloodstain just under her chin - the corner of her mouth twisted upwards into a dimple, “Good.”


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, after Edward hung back while she slept off a heavy dose of antibiotics, he finally sniffed her out, hearing her through the study door upstairs. Jack and Nora; in the middle of a closed-door sort of conversation. No matter, he thought, sooner or later he’d have to know what the plan was and he was a patient man among many other qualities native to men of war. He’d wait.

An hour into him smoking cigarette after cigarette down in the foray, with a glass of whiskey, Emogene strolled down the stairs, tilting her gaze up at the closed door. She gave him a curious look, arching a slim manicured brow. 

“We have a visitor?” she asked flippantly, heading towards him in a sashay of silk to pour herself a glass of bourbon on ice.

Edward clinked his glass, smoke curling out the side of his mouth, “Yeah, your rescuer,” he rasped dryly.

She snorted, nose wrinkling. 

Emogene never did like being a damsel, though she so often was. Edward took a good long look at her. Didn’t take long for the serum to work its magic. She was already looking young and supple again. Same as when he first saw her. In her old age, she hadn’t grown up, though, still a brat most times.

He rested his elbows on the bar, thumbing the side of his drink in silence. Waiting.

Emogene strolled over to the couch, laying herself over the cushions with her legs crossed and lifted. “Mother said she got cut up pretty bad,” she said, twisting around to look back at him. He shrugged, grunting an affirmative despite himself.

She continued, smiling, “She said you gave her some of my clothes. Hope you told her she can’t just keep ‘em.”

“Trust me, you won’t miss them,” he rasped, tipping the watery dregs of alcohol down his throat before stubbing out the rest of his smoke over the melted ice with a sneer. There was a slight clash upstairs before the door opened, Jack’s eccentric lecture filling the whole foray.

“-a sample test run! - is all I ask. Otherwise, we run the risk of harming viable cells attached to the whole network.”

Edward didn’t look up at the landing, but he turned his head alright; ruined ear hole tuned and listening.

“It’s a chain reaction you see,” Jack continued, “The more sure we are of the end results the fewer variables I’ll have on my end. The less disastrous the outcome as well.”

“So you admit there’s a risk,” Nora asked finally; a soft voice of reason to Jack’s animated flare.

“Science isn’t possible without risks. Unforgiving some would say, but if I’m right about this then we could sustain you indefinitely - I mean, look around you. We’ve been here longer than you have and my accomplishments have been monumental. We really are on the forefront of something incredible!”

There was a soft buzzing in Edward’s ears as if he could hear her mind running through the process. What Jack had planned for her was something new and he wasn’t sure he enjoyed being out of the loop on this one. The less he knew about Jack’s ‘experiments’ the better, usually - this time he felt a pang of curiosity. Something he wasn’t sure he liked. Nora...she didn’t know what she signed up for he was sure. It was one thing to help Jack on the outskirts of some hypothesis, but being part of the theory was different. Something Deegan knew from first-hand experience...

“Listen, Jack,” she wrangled gently, “You’ll have to do with the samples for now. I can’t accept any unnecessary risks. Not now, you understand?” she asked with an air of patience meant for a child, maybe. Edward nearly smirked as he caught her blearily folding her arms out the corner of his vision.

“Yes. Yes! Of course. I’ll get to work on the blood samples - shouldn’t take me more than a few weeks to document any changes and in that time I can keep you upda-”

“Please,” she urged, “I’ll come back in a month, alright. We can talk more about it then.”

“Of course!” Jack exclaimed, much less enthusiastic than he was previously. But that was expected considering Nora wasn’t as thrilled about this as Jack was. Not many people could match his enthusiasm to be fair and from the one-sided tone of the conversation, it sounded less likely to be Nora’s idea of a good time.

Edward flattened his palms over the bar, watching openly as Nora tugged down the hem of those shorts of Emogene’s - too small and high-hemmed. They barely covered the swell of her backside, much to Edward’s guarded pleasure. She had a more rounded curve to her than Emogene. Nora had that sort of frame that made a man want to grab fistfuls of her and just fuck the in between. The memory of her bare breasts, as blood covered and dirty as they’d been, hadn’t left him alone for more than a minute at a time. Even splattered with gore she’d been a sight to behold…

She made him thirsty, more so than any woman he’d had the pleasure and annoyance to be enraptured by had before. He was only a man after all. Underneath all the radiation scars and exposed tendon his blood pumped as red as any other man’s and it pumped hard as she bounced down the stairs, looking uncomfortable in a stranger's clothes, everything still on show. 

Nora gave him a passing glance, but that was it and Edward was too stricken by the realization that his old cock had gone solid behind the counter to give her any kind of goodbye. 

She didn't offer him one anyhow, just blinked, picked up her gun and left out the door. 

It was an anticlimactic end to what could have been something promising. 

Edward didn't see her for another four months, which looking back on it now he knew she wouldn't be back in that month. That woman had bigger parties to attend to that anything Jack could host. 

During her absence there was a firefight in the courtyard, spilling out from the leftovers of whatever fresh hell had been unleashed on Bunker Hill. Jack sent him down to the port a few days after the commotion settled, but the place had been damn near abandoned and of the three that were left, described a woman similar to the one he was waiting for - the same one he’d started stroking himself too again when the nights were restless. Fuckin’ Nora, he cursed often and sometimes under his own breath out loud. 

She was still alive, he knew that then at least.

However, that was over a month ago and there'd been no new news pertaining to her or any of the fallout she'd caused. The only respite from his thoughts was his strict routine: every morning at four-thirty he woke, laid out one-hundred and twenty push-ups, downed a serving of powdered survival sludge with a bottle of water before securing the outer perimeter and checking in with the men and women under his charge. Before Jack woke up he was already showered, locked and loaded at the landing. Waiting.

At lunch, he'd have a scotch, pray for chaos and promptly admit defeat. The rest of the day never amounted to more than this, standing by in case he was needed. This dull living made Edward nostalgic for the days of war; days where he wasn't hopeful he'd even live out ‘til nightfall. 

He needed something to do, some enemy to fight. For the longest time, he at least had that old crazy bastard to keep behind lock and key. A purpose, as unsustainable as it had been. 

Their worlds had reached a peak when he found Nora by chance. Now she was gone just as suddenly and the life he'd lived until then wasn't even half as eventful as it once was. 

Thankfully, just when he was getting itchy in his own skin again, Emogene ran off. 

The girl left a note this time but Wilhelmina wouldn’t have it after the upset from Bunker Hill a month ago. She said Raiders would snatch her up and ruined her daughter beyond repair. Deegan knew the deceptively pretty girl could handle herself out there, but that wasn’t for him to decided. A few days passed and Jack finally gave him the word to move out with a frown and hanging spectacles.

“Mother won’t leave me alone until she’s back. It’s always the same! And I’m so close Edward, I can feel it this time.”

“Sure, Jack. I won’t be long,” or maybe he would, time stood still here more than ever, “you have my word.”

“Of course, of course. Anything to keep Mother happy.” Jack waved him away, too quick to sink back into his microscope to catch Edward grinning. At least this phase of waiting was over and done with. 

From his own experience, the Third Rail served a strong whiskey sour, which he’d make use of whether Emogene was there or not. His first stop, whenever he was sent out on retrieval, was Goodneighbor. Nine times out of ten she was there or, more annoyingly, at that shit bar in Diamond City. 

It took him three hours on foot to get there. The neon lights blinked lazily in the evening fog, gleaming back down on the barrel of his rifle as he slung it over a shoulder before opening the door. As usual, the place was alive; rank with sweat and alcohol and any number of other bodily fluids. That old reek from the storm drains still pervaded the place, even after all these decades. 

“Charming,” he muttered to himself. Somewhere close he could hear the telltale sounds of two people fucking loudly. 

He nodded at one of the ghoulified Watchmen as he passed. This one remembered him, not like a few of the unfamiliar faces that stared, their fingers - raw and smooth alike - wringing around the cool steel of their tommy guns. Despite the stress of this place, he relished it over the stagnant environment of the Manor. Fuck, he missed this hellhole. In another life with different choices, he'd have managed fine as a gun for hire here, waiting for some caravan or traveler to pass through in need of some extra protection. That job probably wouldn't help him live long, but at least each day would differ from the last. 

Ham tipped his chin when he entered the Third Rail, but the easy familiarities ended there.

The bar was packed, filled to the gills with drunks and junkies laughing, fighting and the like. Deegan saw her before he noticed much of anything else - an hourglass form perched on a thin barstool, face turned into a silhouette so fine it made his gut pull. 

She was wearing a red dress. 

Like old times. Nora. Red dress, thin straps over her shoulders with her hair down, Nora.

He took a step forward, blinked and finally cleared his tunnel vision. 

The lank, red form of Goodneighbor’s very own Mayor Hancock was leaning beside her, turning his wrist in an animated gesture as he talked to her. She was smiling charmingly back, leaning forwards enough into their conversation that Edward felt his lips pull thin. Just when he’d gone and thought she’d left the Commonwealth, here she sat. Drinking and shifting those long legs beside a young Ghoul with a beautiful woman’s attention. He wasn’t too prideful to admit he was jealous right then, but it passed despite the way Nora leaned back to laugh, looking for all intents and purposes like she was having a good time.

That crisp memory of her bare breasts, red and full with tan nipples peaked from the adrenaline and cold air filled his mind. The vision of her bare breasts still hung around him as he stepped through the crowd, making a path towards her. Edward didn’t get far before she turned on her stool as if he’d called her name. Nora caught his eye, her own kohl-lined orbs widening before her soft smile stretched wide.

“Deegan!” she shouted into the thin crowd between them, face lighting up with a red hue not just from the colored lights above.

She looked just like she did at the Veteran’s Ball....it was fucking with him in too many ways to count, not least of which that hunger he’d been curtailing for months now. He should have taken the long way here and killed something. 

The Mayor turned, catching himself before he could frown at the ghoul who’d interrupted them. Nora uncrossed and crossed her long legs as she turned towards Edward, reaching out a hand to pat the hard shell of his combat armor. She was intoxicated, but not too much - enough to act this loose around him but not enough to fall off her stool. 

“Mayor Hancock, this is Edward Deegan, someone I’ve known a long, long time. An old and dear friend of my late husband’s. You know they served in the war together,” she declared openly and with a smile, palm still resting on the faded star etched into his chest plate. Edwards felt his lips part but he didn’t speak. She’d thrown him off.

“Small world,” Mayor Hancock drawled, not the least bit uncomfortable in his skin or the ridiculous getup. He pushed his elbows back on the bar, grinning under the brim of his hat, “Well then, didn’t know you were prewar, Deegan. You gotta stop by Daisy’s before you leave. She’ll have my head if she knew I’d let you go without stearin’ you in her direction.”

“We’ve talked already,” Deegan rasped, giving him a stiff tilt of his jaw. Hancock just smirked, but finished his drink and tapped the bar table with his knuckles.

“Well, dollface, this is where our ride ends,” Hancock gestured with a tip of his hat, “Until next time of course.”

“Likewise,” Nora smiled, following the lithe red back of the Mayor while Edward ordered up a whiskey sour, pretending he was searching the crowd when he was really trying to look for trouble. He needed a fist fight if he was to get through this situation without saying something, or doing something to her he shouldn’t.

“Didn’t think I’d see you so soon,” Nora mused, closer to him than she should have just so she didn’t have to speak up over the music and dozens of other conversations. “What brings you here? Not looking for me I hope - Jack can experiment on something else while I take care of-”

“Emogene,” he cut in, trying not to growl but failing, “she’s run off again and Jack can’t shake Wilhemina.” 

The sharp bite of the alcohol cleared his head enough that he stopped searching the crowd. Nora was looking up at him. A light sheen of sweat caught the lights above as she looked for something in his face.

He continued, “I bring her back and things go on as normal. You know the drill. She likes this place more than the others.”

“I could see why. No holds bar type of thing here,” she told him, looking a bit wicked before she twisted in her seat, resting her cheek in her palm, still looking up at him with a vague notion of bliss, “Do you like it here better than other places?”

Deegan let out a thick breath, watching the crowds again with narrowed eyes, “It’s better than the Manor. Can’t tell you how many times I found myself counting the exits.”

“I don’t know how you stand it. Or how any of them do. Is it any wonder Emogene leaves as much as she does?”

“It ain’t exactly in the job description to question an order, but I don’t blame her if that's what you're asking. She’s a tough girl. She’ll come home when she’s ready but…”

“Mothers worry too much sometimes. To be fair, though, after two centuries you’d think a girl could do what she wanted without mommy throwing a fit.”

Her attitude on the subject changed it seemed. No arguing there, though, Edward agreed but something about the slip into this easy conversation after so many months was unnerving. He felt like a slip in for the Mayor as she watched him with easy smiles and airy conversation. Maybe she was high. There was a can of purified water beside her elbow, not a glass of something strong. This place was a haven for junkies, could be she was running a cloud without the signs being all too obvious. 

“Well, since you asked,” she smirked wryly, “no, I haven’t seen her. Someone would have said something if she’d been here. Of that I’m sure. Pretty girls don’t go unnoticed around here especially.”

Pretty girls had nothing on her, he thought, letting his eyes fall down her pink face. The dress dipped down between her breasts, exposing a natural line of cleavage and then some. Nora laughed and his eyes darted up to hers. She’d caught him, but there was a knowing smile given before she shook her head and grabbed his wrist, tugging him away from the bar where half of his whiskey still laid undrunk.

“Come with me, Deegan,” she told him, pulling him through the crowds, letting him bump into her as they passed by nameless faces and up the stairs. All the while he followed silently, maybe a bit in shock while she peeked back at him with sultry glances and, on one pass, a softly bitten lip.

“If you wanted to fuck me all you had to do was say so,” she whispered, too loudly and too close to Ham at the entrance. 

Deegan caught the other man’s eye, noticed the silent awareness in the stern expression before Nora jerked him around a corner; oblivious. He felt unsteady on his feet as she slipped them into darkness before shouldering open a dingy door to a bathroom. The light was yellow with age and dim enough that when she let him go he was briefly disoriented.

“I’ve been huffing jet since this afternoon - jet always made me so wet...you want to fuck me like this? or do you need a feather bed now that the war’s over?”

Edward was speechless as she breathed, chuckling under her breath. Her fingers slid the hem of her dress up enough that she could bend over and drag her underwear down around her thighs. He could see down her dress, where the silhouette of her breasts shown. Even in the lighting, he could see the stiff peaks of her nipples before she stood back with a strangely distant look.

“Come here, Eddy,” she smiled shyly, almost…

The way she pronounced his name - that little cute clip made his cock harden despite himself. He swallowed, felt more than saw her take a step towards him.

“I haven’t been fucked yet since I got here,” she admitted, still curling her lips as if he didn’t notice the strange way her eyes creased, “you wanna do the honors or what?” Her dirty words sounded as delicate as gentle ballroom music. Why he thought about that as her fingers unbuckled his belt he wasn’t sure - some old nostalgia only she could drag up no doubt.

Nora sucked and bit her lower lip, yanking his belt from the loops hard enough his hips snapped and again he was brought back to a time before his skin shriveled and peeled. Old times. Good times...

Behind him, he could hear the bustle of chaotic drunks through the open bathroom door. Ham, that bouncer, was within ample hearing distance. They were too vulnerable in here, but this was an opportunity he wasn’t going to pass up. He should - should take her by the elbow, pick up her underwear from the floor and get her a room at the Rexford. To hell with that, though. 

There were times when he’d fucked in less private places than this in more morally thin circumstances. Edward couldn’t argue the timing or place as Nora pushed his pants down his hips in the same furious way he’d pictured removing her clothes. A good man might not have taken advantage of her like this but Edward didn’t hesitate to lift her onto the dry sink, hike up her dress and spread her thighs. 

“Eager aren't we, Mr. Deegan?” she smiled, wet and still slightly high.

Edward gave her thighs a hard squeeze, hooking his thumbs under her knees in lieu of speech. Nora could do enough talking for the both of them it seemed.

She reached down between them, soft fingers curling under his ragged cock, pulling the head of it to that burning slice of deliciousness. No hesitation, he thought, grinning as she licked her lower lip. Nora sucked in a scream when he suddenly slammed home, wedging himself in until he couldn’t go any deeper - until he could feel his grip on her slipping from the sweat that formed over her skin. Nora wasn’t as wet as she’d led on, but it didn’t matter now.

“...shit,” he heard her gasped. 

Deegan swiped a thumb over the slick smoothness under her knee, savoring that distant memory of sweaty fucks and hard labor. How simple it had been to wipe the sweat off his brow and how exotic it was now to feel it on her. Nora...he’d been dreaming of being inside her like this for longer than anyone should ever dream, or ever draw breath. 

“Fuck me, Eddy,” she begged, demanded, with her fingers tight around the leather straps of his chest plate, “fuck me until it hurts.”

Deegan wouldn’t have pegged her this demanding during sex, but everything about it made his cock pulse and throb. He needed this, more so than he wanted to admit. Depraved words stuck in his throat where useless declarations of lust and love lingered, but he shoved his teeth into his tongue and fucked her with as much abandon as his shaking knees could allow. 

Like a wild animal, he thought, as her head fell back against spider-cracked glass. Her flushed lips were parted, open and gasping with each thrust. She’d gone from the calculated woman he’d admired, all put together and fair, to something ferocious and hungry and when and where that transition happened Deegan wasn’t sure.

Nora whispered ‘hurt me’ barring her teeth when he slapped his hips into her hard enough that the contact of her inner thighs on his naked hips stung. The death grip her cunt had on him fluttered, loosening up enough that his pace quickened without comprehension. 

Harder and faster and deeper and smoother and each and every thrust made her wetter until his head was swimming with glorified pleasure.

He fucked her hard and fast and without mercy. The look of pain that scrunched her nose only carried him past the point he would have, should have, stopped. The harsh exhales, like breathing through a battle wound, urged his hips forwards, snapping forward; back and forth.

This was nothing like he'd pictured, but he wasn't a man to skirt opportunity. He'd take her any way she'd give herself to him. If she wanted the big ghoul she could just barely trust to fuck her until she cried in a filthy bathroom above the Third Rail then he’d be that big ghoul ready to fuck her. If she wanted to get high and exorcise her demons this way, he’d do her a favor and play along. He didn't get many open signs in life, ‘specially not now. Edward wasn't a good enough man to say no to himself or to her. So he threw his hips up into her, heard the wet slick between them echo against the ancient tile walls.

He'd be lying if there wasn't a nasty part of him that enjoyed the idea of fucking Nate’s wife like this, if only his old comrade was alive for this. Just thinking about that made Edward feel mixed feeling of guilt and pride. 

Nora twisted against him, making a dying wail that stabbed his inner ears, punctuating her nails going into the exposed skin along his neck. She froze suddenly against his slapping hips, mouth open in a silent scream. Nora was cumming. He could feel it. The fluttering contractions squeezed him, only relaxing just when he thought she’d mutilate him if it didn’t stop then and there. 

When she started sobbing with whatever it was he made her feel - pain, pleasure...probably some obscene combination of both, his hips slowed. 

Her face was blotchy with red stains, tear tracks, and sweat. Beautiful. 

“Don't,” she breathed, eyes half open, “don't...look at me like that.”

Edward wasn't sure which way he was looking at her or what it was that offended her. Maybe he stared like a man who was being used but didn’t mind because of some pointless emotion left to evolve into something it shouldn’t have. He closed his lips around his teeth, snorting out a snarling breath before he could fuck up and say what he wanted to. Her thighs cinched tightly around his hips, shifting up under his ribs as he churned within her. So soft and strong and relentless even while he stroked her insides carefully. The little twitches of her lips told him she was raw, but the way her arms and legs held against him said she wasn’t done yet.

Nora bared her teeth, “I said don't look at me like that.”

“Kiss me then,” he rasped. His throat was burning with the fresh words he didn’t mean to say. Every hard breath had turned his throat to raw meat. 

Nora blinked, parted her lips but he quickly bent his knees to fucked up inside her deeply, as deep as he could manage. Something to shut her up, keep out whatever pity she was about to spew. The last thing he ever expected was a kiss but that’s what she gave him…

“Oh, Edward…”

The warmth of her palms slid to his jaw, fingers and thumbs curling hard and something in his neck pinched as she dragged his mouth to her, but he closed his eyes and opened up for her. Damn, she tasted sweet and salty and so much better than apple pie.

Her skin went slick under his palms; sweaty and searing the more carefully he thrust inside of her. The deeper his tongue flicked the more her thighs shook. The more gentle he touched her the more this felt like a midnight tumble in a soft bed rather than a hard fuck in a bar bathroom. She moaned, kissing his parted lips as he released her mouth, grunting as the pressure in his gut moved to his balls. He was close. 

Nora sighed, “It shouldn’t feel like this but...oh god! - it does...” 

Deegan bet he knew what she meant, but he was even more sure he didn’t care and maybe she didn’t either. It was easy to forget that, to her, Nate wasn’t long gone, and yet here she was and here he was. What it must feel like to her. Maybe he’d be doing her a favor by stabbing her with his cock, making it sting; making her cry from it, but it felt too good to stopped this. Whatever ‘this’ was.

To alleviate the ache in his lower back he shifted; his angle changing. Nora sucked in a hard breath, groaning. After that she started to beg with sweet words, murmuring along his dry lips. Words like ‘please’, ‘just a little more’, ‘no’ and then quickly followed by a litany of ‘yes’s’. 

Edward growled, right there. Right on the edge. 

Quickly, he licked into her mouth when it opened again in a throaty plea. He rolled his hips into her until she whimpered and clawed at his back, teeth stuck on his lower lip. And just when he felt fresh tears start falling between their cheeks that's when the final claw of pleasure really sank deep.

It had little warning. She came again, barely there and so quiet that it threw him off balance. His balls tightened and the pleasure popped like a gunshot, leaving a stain of bliss in his lower body like a swirl in the dark, making his cock twitch and fire. All that unused adrenaline gushed out of him, spilling out of her to slide wet and warm down his thighs. It felt dirty and primal, something he needed desperately to feel again.

“Fuck,” she cursed, nails latched onto the back of his neck, “fuck, fuck, fuck...fuck!” 

He expected her to snarl and throw him back after this, but she curled around him, hugged him close and buried her face into the hard polymer of his armor. She sniffled wetly, sighing so hard he felt her deflate against him.

A few seconds passed and then minutes passed until he could hear her chuckle sadly, mewling as his softened cock slipped out of her.

Nora’s thumb stroked a smooth patch of scar tissue along his spine. That little touch, just that soft sensation felt more intimate than what just happened somehow.

“Sorry if you feel like I used you,” she started, voice raspy and muted, “truth be told I guess I did, but I’m glad you showed up when you did. Not that there was anything wrong with John...I just...”

Deegan shifted, his legs burned and knees felt numb, but he carefully plucked her up and got her settled on her feet. Used? Yeah, but he was just as guilty of that as she was, probably more. 

Nora gave him a genuine, sad smile, “I can’t explain it-”

“You don’t need to,” he told her, watching her look up at him with surprise as he folded his cock away, buckling it back into his pants. The wet feeling of his semen soaking into the fabric was unpleasant but it was worth the minor discomfort for what it meant to him. 

“I suppose not...I’m sorry about your wife, whatever happened to her. It’s never the same I suppose.”

“I suppose,” he mimicked, unwilling to go into details about him and his wife’s relationship. Whatever Nora had had with Nate wasn’t anything him and his own long-dead wife had shared. It’d feel wrong to offer anything else as Nora looked past him, lost in some old memory of hers. She blinked wetly, found him watching her silently in the dim lighting and pursed her lips.

It was then that the realization finally sunk him. Good thing Nate was long dead. He wouldn't put Nate’s fresh corpse past him to revive itself just to gut him for this. For fucking Nora. 

“Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system,” she declared, plastering on a determined expression, “You think you might need some help looking for Emogene? I got some spare time to kill and the human thing helps if we need to stop off at the Green Jewel of The Commonwealth.”

Of course, he almost stuttered. Deegan imagined popping off the head of a raider, clearing a firefight with Nora and fucking frantically afterward in some alleyway - a hand over her mouth to keep their position hidden. He imagined waking up in the night while they were holed up in some safe haven, only to turn her over and take solace in her after an old nightmare.

He thought about wedging himself inside her where Nate’s memory still lingered...and found himself agreeing without even thinking about the drawbacks. 

“Good, now you can let me make all this up to you.”

Yeah, Edward thought, watching her pluck up her underwear from the floor. Making it up to him, if only he was sure she knew what that meant to him. 

Nora didn't know what she signed up for, of that he was certain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there's my contribution to the small Deegan fanbase. I love Hancock to pieces but I wish Edward had been a companion after the questline. Comment if you have the time. Thank you to all those that read, commented and left kudos. It's much appreciated and loved.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a simple two-parter. I liked Deegan, thought he was a damn interesting character (and those muscles, fuck). Let me know what you all think of this first part. Smut is to come in the next part.
> 
> Tumblr ----> http://brimbrimbrimbrim.tumblr.com/


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